I rise pride this morning to thank colleagues at the federal level, who last night in a historic vote of 204 to 117, voted for a motion that was called “peace in the Middle East.”

Now, Speaker, I know on social media this morning, there will be people scoring points and talking about how this was a vote against certain people. I want to remind the members of this House that human rights is inter-jurisdictional. Seeing the value of every person to have peace and security is inter-jurisdictional.

I want to thank people from the Bloc Québécois, from the Green Party, from the Liberal Party and from my party, the New Democratic Party, who stood up last night to tell our government that we need to be a voice for peace. This is what Canadians have been calling for for months. It’s not easy to march in the rain, to march in the snow, to feel like you’re not being heard, to feel like your humanity is not being seen. But it was seen last night at the House of Commons, Speaker, and I want to thank MPs Heather McPherson and Matthew Green for leading that.

I want to end on a note of great pride from Albert Dumont, Algonquin elder, poet laureate of our city in Ottawa, who told me when I got elected, “Joel, you can use your platform to tear other people down, or you can use it to heal your community and to heal our country and heal our world.” So I want to thank the parliamentarians last night who sent a clear message to the government of Israel, who sent a clear message to all of those involved in a horrifying war at this moment: The war has to stop. The war has to stop, and we need peace.

It’s a pleasure to rise this morning and speak to this legislation before the House, the New Deal for Toronto Act.

I want to acknowledge some breakthroughs in this legislation, despite the fact that I have some lingering concerns. One of the breakthroughs, I think, about this legislation is beyond what’s actually in the bill. It’s a lesson for anybody that wants to get into politics. Let me explain what I mean by that, Speaker.

We began this morning with a prayer, with the directive, as we have often heard, to use power wisely and well, to create a society where freedom reigns and where justice rules. I love that prayer. It’s a terrific prayer. But often in the five years I’ve served in this building for the great people of Ottawa Centre, I’ve heard us collectively offer that prayer, and then the moment we tumble into debate, we start doing the opposite. We start saying and holding forth in a way that disrespects each other, that insults the integrity of this place and that puts Ontario on a bad footing, in my opinion.

I believe the Premier of this province did that when, on June 21, 2023, he called Mayor Olivia Chow an “unmitigated disaster.” Those were the words that tumbled out of the most powerful office-holder in this province. The Premier is entitled to his opinions. His speech, like all of our speech, is charter-protected. But I don’t think he set a very good example for people who are thinking about getting into politics in the way he characterized someone like Mayor Olivia Chow as, again, for the record, on June 21, 2023, an “unmitigated disaster.” The Premier was making the argument, I guess, that Mayor Chow—now Mayor Chow—would create too great a toll on the revenues of the city of Toronto and was too ambitious in her plans. Well, the people of Toronto thought differently. Thankfully for us, the Conservative-supported candidates in that mayoral race would appear to have been split at least three ways because they couldn’t get their act together.

So what Mayor Chow has done since then is not respond in kind with ritual denunciations to the Premier—that’s more his gambit. What she has done is take the higher road in speech after speech. Her choice was not to fire back at the Premier and call him a bunch of names. She certainly could have. Her choice was to say, “What do the people of Toronto deserve?” They deserve good transit. They deserve community safety. They deserve money for housing; money for community services; the after-school programs that so many children in this city rely upon; the city staff, who work hard every single day, whether it’s collecting the garbage or the recycling in this city or monitoring the safety of our streets, roads and enforcing the bylaws, or making sure the beautiful parks of this city are well-maintained. That was Mayor Olivia Chow’s priority—not responding in kind to ridiculous assertions from the Premier. There’s a lesson in here for how we do politics.

And do you know what also is informative for me, Speaker? What’s informative for me is: This week, as the Premier was promoting this particular bill in the House, I saw him describe Mayor Olivia Chow as the greatest NDP leader in history. Colleagues, did you see that too? So it’s an interesting leap of logic for a man to go from categorizing somebody as an unmitigated disaster to calling her the greatest NDP leader in history. What’s happened since? Well, I want to believe that what’s happened since is that one person showed humanity in politics and the other did not. One person showed how you lead in a moment, despite the arrows slung by your critics, and the other did not.

It reminds me, Speaker, of a quotation often used by the great Nelson Mandela, someone who had the pleasure to visit this particular building twice. I have a picture of one of those occasions proudly in my office. Mandela once said, “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Who would know the lesson of that better than him? Someone imprisoned for 27 years by an apartheid regime that dehumanized him.

And I think about Mayor Olivia Chow and the roads she walked to the mayor’s office: losing a mayoralty race that many people predicted she was pledged to win, getting knocked down, dusting herself off and getting back up again to serve not yourself, but to serve the community that you live in.

I had great pleasure, Speaker, to knock on doors in the mayoral by-election. I came a day early one weekend. It’s always a negotiation, I’m sure, for all of us when we come to this city from out of the city a day early. I had to plead with my family: “Hey, let me go a day early to Toronto. I want to go knock on doors for Olivia in St. James Town, where she grew up.” And when I knocked on some of these apartment buildings, they are, in Ottawa-Centre terms, like twice or three times the size of apartment buildings back home—massive apartment buildings. But when I said the words “Olivia Chow,” faces brightened because those are the buildings Olivia grew up in. That was the community she proudly served as an immigrant kid coming to this country at the age of 14, with a family divided by violence and difficulty. She persevered to the office of school board trustee. She persevered to the office of city councillor. And now, St. James Town has a mayor—a mayor, in the seat of power, serving this great city. That’s not an unmitigated disaster, Speaker; it’s a Canadian success story. She withstood the arrows from this Premier. She clearly has turned him around.

And now, before the House, we have a piece of legislation that is proposing some significant investments that I want to talk about this morning. One of them is something that I have had occasion to talk about many times as the transit critic for this province: funding for operational transit. In this legislation is $300 million in a one-time transfer for subway and transit safety recovery and sustainable operations. Another is a $330-million investment over three years—that funding accumulates over three years—for operating support for new integrated provincial transit projects.

People have been rising in this House for years, encouraging this government, encouraging governments before it, to not come to the people of Ontario and say, “We have a wonderful transit plan. Billions of dollars of aspirational transit projects”—be it the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, the Finch West LRT, the Confederation LRT in my city. “Look at the wonderful products we have. Look at the consultants we’re hiring. Look at the beautiful ticker tape we’re going to cut at press announcements.”

This is what I call aspirational transit. That is what governments have been seized with in Ontario for years, but it hasn’t moved a single human being, and the only person who has been employed by aspirational transit are the consultants hired to come up with the dreams. Meanwhile, the women and men who woke up this morning early to move people around this great city have been struggling with a poorly funded transit system.

But again, what precedes this bill? What precedes this bill is a mayor of the city, Olivia Chow, who said on September 20 that as this government’s aspirational transit plans continue to fail, the Finch West LRT, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT—both over budget, both delayed, both being built by consultants who rake huge salaries from the taxpayers despite delivering nothing. Mayor Chow announced that she was going to reallocate, based on advice from staff, $10.3 million from these delayed aspirational transit projects to the TTC that actually exists. She said in that press conference that 160 more staff could be hired with that $10.3 million to make sure staff were visible on our trains, to make sure neighbours who are having mental health challenges, whatever they may be—feeling themselves unsafe, making other people feel unsafe—they would visibly be interacting with staff so transit could be safer.

While we’ve had a government for years that has gotten up in this building and talked about aspirational transit, here we had a mayor of this city who said, “Actually, I’m going to redirect money from your failing transit projects”—I’m adding the editorialism; Olivia is a bigger person than me—“I’m going to reallocate money to make sure that people are safe in our subways, because the aspirational transit systems of this government and governments before it are failing.” That’s leadership.

But what’s also leadership in this bill is the fact that we have finally convinced the Premier of this province to take an interest in operational transit. But as the member for Orléans just said, the transit needs in this province are much bigger than the city of Toronto. We need a new deal for transit all over this province. We need it for Sudbury; we need it for Niagara Falls; we need it for Windsor; we need it for Thunder Bay; and we absolutely need it for Ottawa, Speaker. I can tell you that. Because what we just learned at city council in Ottawa is that in 2024, we are going to have 74,000 fewer service hours in our public transit system—74,000.

I took the bus over the weekend, as I was finding my way around community events. I took the number 6 down Bank Street, headed back to home near where I live, near Billings Bridge—packed to the gills, barely a place to sit or stand. But do you know what was great, Speaker? You could always see, as I’ve seen on so many buses, so many subways, neighbours helping elderly folks, people with children finding safe places to sit.

But you ask yourself the question, “Why isn’t there another bus right behind this bus at peak hours? Why is there one staff member on this entire elongated bus sitting in the front, behind Plexiglas, and no other staff members that are available, dispersed across stops to help people figure their way on and off the bus who have mobility challenges?” Cutbacks, Speaker—cutbacks from this government.

What we know is, we’re $500 million short in operational funding for transit across the province of Ontario. We have been making the message very clear to this government that in their upcoming budget, they need to put that $500 million back into the system so the buses, the subways, the streetcars can run safely and run effectively to get people to work and get people back home, get people where they need to go. But that hasn’t happened.

So who has been the stopgap, as this government loves its aspirational transit but neglects its operational transit, loves its dreams but disrespects the people who deliver every single day? I’m going to tell you: It’s the riders who are organizing to get together to bring messages into this place and, close to my heart, it’s the workers who operate the public transit system.

I want to spend some time this morning talking about someone who has got a message for this House. His name is Cory MacLeod; he’s the president of ATU 1320, which is in the great city of Peterborough. In Peterborough, Cory MacLeod just presided over a terrific campaign that sadly had to lead to a strike, in which he told the city of Peterborough that 2%, which was the original wage offer being offered by the municipal authorities in Peterborough—2% is good for milk, but it’s not good for people fighting to make a living.

I also rise, as my colleagues have done, to grieve collectively the five folks whom we’ve lost in Sault Ste. Marie and to acknowledge that we have a responsibility in this Legislature to reach out to anybody who, right now, is living in a violent home.

I’m sad to say, Speaker, the Ottawa Police Service has just confirmed there has been a double-digit increase in intimate partner violence charges in our city. Across the river in Gatineau, the increase is up 300 in police officers having to intervene in domestic assaults in violent homes.

Right now, Cornerstone women’s shelter in Ottawa has had to turn away 360 people who have called them for help in accessing their shelter because their shelter is full. Shelter Movers Ottawa has had a double-digit increase in their folks who try to call Shelter Movers Ottawa so that they can move out of a violent home, free of charge for women and their children in low-income circumstances.

So I call upon this government—because I know we all care about it in this place—to send a message imminently out of this Legislature that intimate partner violence has reached epidemic proportions, to agree with the Renfrew county inquest report and to send a signal, through funds that we will allocate to organizations in all of our ridings, that you can leave a violent home, that the province of Ontario is behind you and we believe you have the right to live free of violence.

Speaker, with great thought to what other members in this House have said, I rise to speak to this motion today from a particular point of departure.

For years, I was a university professor. I taught and studied human rights both in Canada and around the world. I had the privilege to study with students from Israel and Palestinian communities, from places all over the world, and that life experience has led me to say the following to contribute to this debate.

I think we need, right now, a very serious response among political leaders to the ongoing horrors in Israel and in Gaza. My contribution to this debate is that I believe it’s time to raise our voices for peace with justice, and I’ll describe this afternoon what I mean by that.

Back home, like I heard from the member for Thornhill and many others, I have been talking to Jewish and Palestinian neighbours who are grieving in a deep state of trauma for having lost loved ones, and many more who are living their lives, right now, terrified. They have been quite clear to me that there is one important thing I immediately have to do for them, and that is to offer them support, to offer them comfort for what they’ve lived through, the atrocities of October 7, and what they continue to live through in what is truly one of the most horrifying weeks I’ve seen in my lifetime.

The war crimes committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians last Saturday have shocked us; they have shaken the community I serve. Hundreds of civilians maimed, executed or kidnapped have had direct impacts on my city and they must be condemned unreservedly.

The same is true for Israeli military attacks that have hurt Palestinian civilians. Speaker, apartment buildings—entire buildings—have been levelled. Entire families have been killed. Food, water, fuel and power have been cut off. Border crossings have been bombed and blockaded as people have tried to escape. The use of deadly white phosphorus, a chemical weapon, has been verified by journalists. These are not actions against Hamas. This is terrifying ordinary Palestinians, and it has to stop.

If this was a serious debate, we would be insisting on what the United Nations has demanded: an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages and a humanitarian aid corridor into Gaza. We would demand justice for all victims of war crimes and their families. We would be insisting that every Canadian seeking to flee this violence can get home safely. But sadly, Speaker, that is not what this motion does. It’s not about trying to comfort those who are grieving—all of those—ending an escalating rise of violence or seeking justice for war crimes against civilians. This motion, sadly, as it currently reads, inflames a dangerous moment, and I think that’s a terrible choice. That’s not the leadership the world needs right now.

This morning, I heard government members—I listened to them closely—say that we must support whatever Israel believes is necessary to “eliminate Hamas from Gaza.” We heard that Israel has always shown restraint, balance and upheld the rule of law. But, Speaker, that is not what I have seen with hourly and daily updates. That is not what I have seen following human rights in this region for decades. Israel is now being led by a government that includes members who openly speak of hatred and violence. That is one of the reasons they, in Israel, have been faced with mass protests by Israelis for months. But the truly horrible, heinous events of October 7 have created a new era of hatred.

I’ve seen the Israeli Minister of Defence, as the member from Scarborough Southwest said already, refer to Palestinians as “animals.” I’ve heard the Prime Minister of Israel promise to turn Gaza into “a deserted island.” I’ve been stunned as Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s interior minister, often invokes the need for a new Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” referencing the last mass expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians so long ago.

Speaker, these are examples of dehumanization. This is how a public is prepared for war. They are meant to justify atrocities that we must do everything in this House to avoid. They will not bring back loved ones who are dead or hostages who are currently held, but they will put Palestinian body bags in ice cream trucks, stored there because the morgues and hospitals in Gaza are currently at capacity. That was the image on my television two nights ago. That cannot be the solution.

Here is what history teaches me, Speaker, and it’s a hard lesson: You can bomb the world to pieces, but you cannot bomb it into peace. We can, and we must, do better. We should listen to Yonatan Silver, son of Vivian Silver, a peace activist from Winnipeg who was taken hostage from her kibbutz in Saturday’s horrific attacks by Hamas on Israel. Yonatan just told CNN, “I didn’t want war before, and I don’t want war now.” He is demanding that his mom be released by negotiation, not by descending Gaza into a humanitarian nightmare.

We should listen to Farah El-Hajj, our staff colleague at the Ontario NDP, who has lost 18 family members in Gaza this week—18. Apparently, 10 more are still buried under a massive rubble of concrete. Farah’s family are not Hamas members; they’re not soldiers; they’re not terrorists. They’re Palestinians and their lives have to matter.

Like many people, as I have heard in this debate, my heart has been shattered, broken, as I’ve spoken to people who have lost loved ones in Israel and in Gaza. To be honest, I’ve often felt powerless to do anything about it, because from where I sit, things seem to be only getting worse. But you know what? As I got ready for my remarks today, I’ve remembered something that history has also taught me: We can do something. We can join with voices around the world who are calling for an end to the bloodshed, for pursuing a road of peace with justice. We need a mass movement around the world for a ceasefire, and we need it now.

Now, I understand some of my colleagues may think that’s impossible in Israel and in Gaza. I’ve heard in debate today that Palestinian children are raised only to hate. But in my own lifetime, Speaker—I’m 51 years old—I’ve studied military conflicts from around the world, and I have seen in my own research and talking to people in Ireland and in Colombia that it is possible to work for peace with justice. These were countries torn apart by violence and war. Peace was possible there because people put in the effort, and it is still possible in Israel and Gaza, but it must come with justice.

The perpetrators of the horrific tragedies on October 7, the terrorist attacks and the crimes against Israeli civilians must be held accountable, and those responsible for the deaths of Palestinian civilians, like the bombing this afternoon of a hospital and a school, must also be held accountable, and a much longer commitment to peace in this region is so long overdue. Our province and our country, we have to choose to be part of that conversation.

That isn’t possible if Hamas believes it can terrorize Jewish communities, committing heinous acts of cruelty. That isn’t possible with an Israeli government intent on punishing innocent civilians for actions that are no fault of their own. And I am not making an argument of moral equivalence here; I am making a case for moral consistency. We must consistently support the human rights of every single person without exception. That is the only way I believe our hearts and souls can stay intact at moments like this.

It’s how we build peace, but building peace isn’t a slogan. It’s what happens every day, all over the world. It’s what happened when Vivian Silver, who has been taken hostage by Hamas terrorists, drove sick Palestinians to Israeli hospitals. That was her activism for her kibbutz. She built peace. She also organized against the Netanyahu government’s attacks on civil liberties, working with neighbours, building peace.

It’s what happened when Farah El-Hajj had the courage to tell us her story at a time of profound, overwhelming grief, and it is what happens when we listen to each other in debate, instead of screaming over each other, as is too often the case in this House.

Speaker, I call on Canadians across this country to demand this road of peace with justice. It’s a road with dignity. It’s a road that may be hard to see right now, but our ancestors have walked it, and we can choose to walk it.